From The NY Times- By ELLEN BARRY Published: April 13, 2013 MOSCOW — A day after the United States imposed sanctions on Russians accused of rights violations, Moscow said Saturday that it could not “leave this open blackmail without response” and published a list of 18 current and former American officials…

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE Embargoed until 0900 GMT, 11 April 2013 Ukraine: Make the police accountable and stamp out torture The Ukrainian authorities must seize the current political opportunity to stop the high level of torture and other ill treatment being carried out by its police force by…

JTA -- Moscow’s new Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center was named Museum of the Year award by the Russia edition of the prestigious The Art newspaper. The award was presented to the museum’s chairman, Boruch Gorin, last week at a ceremony in the Russian capital. The monthly’s Russian edition, the most…

JTA -- Several people were injured after protesters displayed anti-Semitic slogans at a political rally in Ukraine. The April 6 rally in Cherkasy, a city situated 100 miles southeast of Kiev, turned violent after six men took off their jackets to reveal T-shirts emblazoned with the words: “Beat the kikes” and “Svoboda,”…

AFP reports that Lithania's wooden synagogues are falling into ruin due to a lack of funding and support. These rundown buildings are the remaining vestiges of the former Jewish presence that was wiped out in the Holocaust. Between 1941- 1944, the Nazis murdered approximately 90 percent of Lithuania's 200,000 Jews.…

JTA -- The government of Belarus announced plans to renovate one of the country’s oldest synagogues and turn it into a Jewish museum. The museum will be housed this year inside the restored ruins of the main synagogue in Bykhaw, a town located some 150 miles east of Minsk, Belarus’…

JTA -- Unlicensed loggers may be to blame for damage to a Jewish cemetery in the capital Chisinau {Kishinev - G.R.}. Unidentified individuals broke into Chisinau's Metropolitan Jewish Cemetery earlier this week and caused “serious damage” to graves, according to a report on Thursday in Jewish.ru, a Moscow-based news site. Russia’s…

The Moscow Times-- The Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia's oldest human rights organization, on Thursday became the latest NGO inspected in a massive government campaign that has hit hundreds of non-state groups in 25 regions and is unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia, a rights leader said. Prosecutors and Justice Ministry officials on Thursday showed up at the headquarters of the Moscow Helsinki Group, where they…